# American Bestiary

Diego Maenza

Urban myths and legends from all over America are condensed in this collection. Through its pages various spectra pass, as the Chupacabra invokes and enumerates in one of the poems: “Creatures of the night and the sun. Covered Lady, Muqui, Yasy Yeteré, Alligator Man, Kharisiri, Whistler, Widow, Telesita, Curupira, Tata Elf, Cadejo, Just Judge of the Night, Witch Monkey, Holy Death, Demon of Dover, Wendigo, Girl with a scarf, The Crying Girl. Creatures of the underworld, let us unite in this new era in which humanity has degenerated and is the scum of the universe”.

AMERICAN BESTIARY


DIEGO MAENZA

Translated by Gastón Jofre Torres


www.traduzionelibri.it

www.diegomaenza.com

© Diego Maenza, 2018

© Tektime, 2020

© Translated by Gastón Jofre Torres, 2020

Cover illustrations and interior of public domain

www.traduzionelibri.it

www.diegomaenza.com

AMERICAN BESTIARY


DIEGO MAENZA

Translated by Gastón Jofre Torres

## SOUTH AMERICA

### THE COVERED LADY. (Romantic quintet of a beheaded Ecuadorian)

Nupcial poison in
the death rattle of drunkenness.
You howl the pain that escapes from your pores
when you unmask your teeth
and you feel the caress of Tánatos.

Rain of spilled dark prisms.
Rotten vulva that numbs the fellatio.
Who kissed you attest your fragrance,
but the ones you touched are dead;
ergo, I have spoken with death.

Narrow alleys revere you,
mother of darkness, wife of sleep,
sulfur lover, friend of the anthracite.
The magnolia expels sweat from your uterus:
breaks Ecuadorian avenues like carrion.

You distract the young man and the old man in the same way.
Your philosophical postulates: sex and revenge.
Who saw you legitimize your beauty,
but now they are clergymen or they are in the asylums;
ergo, I've talked to the harlots.

One night, drunk with love, I caught up with you.
I found you black as silicon
and I was pale as a pond
that will reflect the moon of your sex.
Suicide is the purest form of love.

### THE MUQUI. (Human poem of a Peruvian miner)

I belong to the mines.
At dawn everything ends and everything begins.
The corollary of cripples is a song of pain.
I chew a coca leaf while I masturbate
ruminating on the paralysis of materialism.

I am elusive even though my cousins are gregarious
and circulate through the streams like a swarm of hilarity.
I have decoded their Quipus and passions,
I have studied gold and man.

I belong to the water
that even washes the darkest corners:
a miner goes by with his stinky armpits,
it crashes its head against a very black stone.
How to talk after the categorical closure
if her children, young men and nymphs have not eaten?

I do not have a neck: how to explain existentialism?
They shiver: shout coldness; they scream: they eat hunger.
I wear my poncho: how to believe in the God of the Sun if he leaves us?
Like mosses: how to trust Huiracocha if there is no corn?
I wear a hat: how to move forward if they exchange our ideas?
I am little: human nature sucks
as much as the nature of the gods.
I stink, you stink, and so on to infinity.

I am the Murik that gives the freedom
of the transparencies that clump together after the afternoon.
The way to salvation leads to a mine
and they are the muriskas who let themselves be led.

They have seen me in Cuzco, Cajamarca and Arequipa.
The most daring ones dream of trapping me in their lands.
I do not know if the larynx I studied yesterday belonged
to a Bolivian or a Peruvian; I took it out intact from the Titicaca.

They accused of stealing the tools of the miners.
And I boast of committing more sublime pranks.
Today I played in the navel of a pond
and in return I gave two gold nuggets as charity.
The blood of humanity is still dripping on the stones.
Then I stayed in the Uku Pacha.
The Twilight ends everything or begins everything.

### YASY YATERÉ. (Lament of a Paraguayan teenager)

The whitish chest, iridescent hair.
A strange albino dwarf in the midst of solid brown fosters
propitiate the excess of the innocent.

Lilith and Asmodeus were their ancestors.
The staff made of branches and gold obey them.
The glow is his friend when abandoning the moon.

You perceive the rustling of the leaf litter and it observes you from the foliage.
It forces you to freak out while it plays its instrument.
It offer fruits and wild honey to your naked teens.

If you are a young man and you like it: kiss on the mouth.
If you are a damsel: bite in the neck.
There are those who affirm that there is no light in heaven,
that darkness is a ventriloquist and
Yasy Yateré is the best interpreter of his monologues.

There are also optimistic animals.
They think that the genie of the flute just intoxicates
with invention to control the masses
of anemic creatures that are lost in the heat wave.

Yasy Yateré attacks from the branches.
Yasy Yateré scares toads, parrots and tapirs.
Yasy Yateré does not take a nap.

### THE ALLIGATOR MAN. (Existential Poem of a Colombian Alligator)

Some claim that I have the body of an alligator
and the head of a man.
I say that my thoughts are human:
vile network of black slogans.

Others say that I have the head of a man
and the body of an alligator.
I say that my heart is beastly:
anomalous vermin that swims in chaos.

One day I copulated with a nereid and her lips
were crystal flowers, leaving the swamp.
It was getting dark and we were still mating.
She groaned and I said “I love you”.

I fell in love with the nereid and her light lips,
the subtlety of her settings immolating my scales.
It was the last night I saw her on the Magdalena River
and wandered on its banks to my own scorn.

Spectra fable their own legends
and project their frustrations into my life.
Intermittent snoopers that darken the day,
sad voyeurs feeding the night.

I think like a man and I feel like a beast.
When I become a man, I am depraved,
I produce the support of pale slogans.
When I become a beast, I am sensitive
and fall in love with the creatures of water.

When I become a man, I am the beast.
When I annihilate myself, I am the resurrection of the swamps.
Am I an alligator with a man`s head
or am I a man with an alligator body?
When did I degenerate my nature and become a human being?

Every day I fight not to turn into a monster.
I look for the nereid among the rubble
that originated the estuaries of pessimism.
From Plato to Bocas de Ceniza,
you will always see me on the shores of the Caribbean.

### THE KHARISIRI. (Whistled ballad in the wind from Guaqui to Potosí)

Shadows fall and its entrails awaken.
(Lake Titicata is a hotbed of sounds)
The creatures emerge with a new skin.
(The wacanas, wac, wac, emit their squawks)

Chorus
Do not look at his eyes, his blond hair.
The demon of the plateau.
The demon of the Aymaras.
Do not invoke his name, do not say his name:
Liqichiri, Phistaco, Ñaqaq, Khari Khari.
The demons do not sleep.

Never travel alone on the trails of Achacachi.
(Sometimes he does not look fat but the marrow)
If there are no humans, he feeds on alpacas.
(First he steals your tool, then he uses your little machine)

The chorus is repeated
Do not look at his eyes, his blond hair.
The demon of the plateau.
The demon of the Aymaras.
Do not invoke his name, do not say his name:
Liqichiri, Phistaco, Ñaqaq, Khari Khari.
The demons do not sleep.

### THE WHISTLER. (Monologue of a Venezuelan plainsman)

High-pitched sound driven by air
invade the silence and break the darkness:
fright arises, the hairs stand on end.
The night glows with darkness.

Whistle that breaks the music theory,
a wanderer creeps away
between the sheets of mist
proclaims the arrival of death.

His whistle is born as the fruit of pain,
scream of assassin, groan of parricide.
Cursed by their ancestors
he carries the skeleton of his parent.

He wanders on the plains on rainy days,
he walks through the plain in times of drought;
while he rests, a bark frightens him:
his dog Tureco follows him until the end of the days.

The whistle penetrates the ears and instills cold,
persecutes pregnant women and drunken people.
It is long and ungainly like a sickle.
He walks with his head downcast.

He wears a hat that covers his shame.
He has a bag that curves his back.
He faces a penalty that consumes him.
He has a pain that condemns him.

If the whistle is heard nearby,
do not fear because the whistler is far away.
If the whistle is heard far away,
the whistler is upon you.

He persecutes drunken people and womanizers.
He sucks the navel of the drunken people
to drink their schnapps.
He destroys the womanizers.

He does not rest.
When he allows himself to rest
counting the skeleton of his creator,
Tureco's howl terrifies him.

He skins the innocent people
and collect the bones
along with the remains of his architect.
If you are a walker, have your own dog.

The whistle is premonition of death.
Take care of those who walk
by the plains of Guanarito
or through the plains of Cojedes and Barinas.

### THE WIDOW. (Desperate song of a Chilean widow)

I got married with excessive love on a full moon.
My husband made me happy that night.

Confusion of love, moon and blood: they murdered him.